John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a few questions. First, the purpose of the meeting is the digital tax and the question of tax harmonisation. The committee will deal with that next week and then we will issue our report which I presume will be debated in the Dáil. We will bring forward the views of the committee in that.

I oppose digital taxation or tax harmonisation. Each state has its own obligations and responsibilities in that regard and that is how it should be. With regard to the Central Bank, it tells us that it deals with the issue of consumer protection. However, looking at what happened with the tracker mortgage issue, for example, and the recent failure of Ulster Bank's systems, it is not consumer protection but standards within banking that have caused both of those issues to arise. The ECB must have a view on the Irish banks that have allowed such circumstances to arise whereby so many Irish customers are now affected by the tracker mortgage issue and by the breakdown of the system in Ulster Bank. When this committee went about contacting the ECB it very quickly kicked the ball back to the Central Bank. The ECB was very active when this country was broke and it did all sorts of things to restructure the banks, but when there was even a smell of consumer protection it turned its back on us and on the Irish people. Is there any way of raising this issue in a significant way with the European Central Bank and to show it that it is not a consumer protection issue but a failure of regulation in Ireland and a failure of the banking system, which directly affects the citizens of this country and the European Union?